


A Dream can be a Nightmare or a Desire

by chatonnerie



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Early in Canon, F/M, a thesaurus was required, but people be dying in the background, not graphic, playing fast and furious with tenses, tw:death, unnecessary amounts of description, whilst they're in the village
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 06:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17198597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatonnerie/pseuds/chatonnerie
Summary: She dreams of drowning. He dreams of burning.





	A Dream can be a Nightmare or a Desire

Shyvana dreams of drowning.

It’s a little unfair, in her opinion, that the one motif that haunts her sleep has nothing to do with any of the actual things she fears. There is never burning black eyes bearing down on her, no ebony wings hovering through her dreams. There is no volcanic landscapes, no nights huddled in caves as the latest array of torches, pitchforks and hex tech stomps by.

She never sees her father’s broken, mangled corpse, wings askew and heart ripped out, the image emblazoned so perfectly she could scour it into stone.

(Maybe even her dreams know not to touch that memory)

Instead she dreams of her desperate flight from her homeland, seeking Demacia, the land without magic. Grief is no substitute to anger, and pain doesn’t fuel flight. With the shores in sight, she’d dropped from the sky and cold had seized her, locking through her fiery core and smothering her power. She always tried to shrink back to her smaller ( _weaker)_ form, but the ocean never lost its grip, dragging her down, further and further, until all she could feel was cold, empty, alone. The experience is surreal, the whole world suspended around her, a single figure drifting in the vast emptiness as an entire ocean crushes on top of her.

(She’d washed up on the shore, heart-rune barely alight)

Her lungs are burning, and in the wrong way, as if the cold is reaching straight to her heart and freezing her blood, turning her limbs into lifeless tools by her side, as the surface drifts further and further away. With each moment, her arms leaden, preventing her from reaching up and clawing her way to the surface.

She tries to cry out, and salt water pours into her mouth, her lungs, filling her being-

 

Shyvana jolted awake, struggling to draw breath, her body numb and fragile. Her lungs demanded oxygen, but breathing didn’t help and she felt like she was drowning, _she was drowning_ , and then she slid off her bed, and half-stumbled her way onto the small building’s front porch, the moon high above.

Her head felt like rocks were filling it, and they were being sewn into her shoulders, her lungs, and she madly gripped the wall, inhaling the night wind and cradling her hand.

Flames flickered, dancing over her palm and she could breath again.

The fire was small, smothered, just like her, by the very land now offering her refuge.

The people of Demacia had offered her a place in their small village and to play with such a power was a terrible insult to their trust, but her Father had never mentioned how much the magic-nullification could _hurt_ (like millions of rocks in her lungs, like the ocean’s cold seeping into her being, quelling her fire, killing her light, as if everything that made her Shyvana was being sucked out and leaving her with nothing but an empty vacuum), then again, he’d never been a huge fan of speaking things that could scare her.

If he had been, maybe she would have learnt about her bond with Yvva before instigating all the consequences of their connection. Consequences that could come here-

No. She was safe here. Here in this land of cold nothing, her fire in her palm extinguished with barely any will of her own, and the human form her limbs had wrapped themselves into no longer felt cramped, her other (her _true_ ) nature no longer having the power to wrestle against her bones.

(And if she has to feel cold, if she has to choke each day to be safe, then maybe drowning-)

 

“You okay?”

She must have been truly deep in her mind, not to hear her housemate approaching. Jarvan, the lost soldier she’d found, walks with heavy feet, as if the weight of two worlds were crushing him, and he visibly startled as she did, surprised that he caught her off guard. Around them the village was silent, the nightly tribulations of their two newcomers holding no interest to workers preparing for a start before the sun rises.

She swallowed, steps lightly back so she could lean against the house for support, before nodding slightly.

His face contorted, concerned, and she didn’t scowl as he came beside her, closer, far closer than any other human.

“Bad dreams?”

Her answer was short, curt (feral), “Yes.”

He smelt of sweat, and his eyes were as dark as ever. Even in her half awake state she was no lumbering beast, and he slept too much like the dead to be awakened by her own restless sleep.

A hard feeling came in her chest, a pull as noticeable as the drowning and she’s just as useless to resist it as well.

“You?” sometimes she regrets the course growl in her tone, the voice that could become a feral snarl within seconds, but he didn’t flinch (maybe slightly sags).

“As always,” his voice is quieter, introspective, as he turned to her, “do you want to talk about it?”

To confide in a human. Such a notion would have made her Father laugh for days.

Yet Jarvan’s eyes are darker, far darker than any human’s she’s met before, and maybe it scares her slightly, how close she can get and still not be whatever is reflected in his eyes - that to let this man near her is to drown all over again, smothered by the darkness of pain and war and whatever else gets a man huddled in a tree log with half his blood stained in the forest and an arrow sticking out from his insides.

“Not anymore.” She softly exhales, the barest wisps of smoke coming out her mouth, and if he asks, she can lie and pull out the pipe the villagers had offered to her.

(She really wants to talk about it.)

They stay there together, watching the moon flee the arrival of the sun, and she wondered if maybe she’d be okay with drowning in his darkness, if it meant one voice to speak too. As if being lost and cold and empty is slightly less terrifying as long as you’re no longer alone, as if she could ignore the fact that it would only be worse once she was abandoned once again.

So no matter how much she tries, Shyvana still dreams of drowning.

 

* * *

 

Jarvan dreams of burning.

Raw heat blasts his skin, as the drums of war sound, the land made barren by violence and no means to hide metal armours from the sun above. Feet march at command, the ground trembling before the gathering of black armoured war bands, all falling beneath the strength of Demacia. There is no place for the dead when an army walks, and the fallen are barely given their dues, white sheets for Demacians and immense burning pyres for Noxians.

It’s nothing compared to the scorched land that awaits him at the border, the bones of villagers (innocents) ashen in the blackened ruins of their homes, crops left asunder, the heat of the sun making the decomposing livestock reek, and the unmistakable sigil of Noxus branded into every last piece of rubble that they razed. His cheeks are flush and sweat trickles down his spine as he fights and argues and digs in his heels. The flames still burn, the massacres were recent – there could be people still to save.

They try to calm him, appease the anger flickering through his being, advise him to wait for reinforcements, to cool off, think clearly. He didn’t fear burning then. He thought he knew what it meant to burn, thought that if he could save them without needing his father’s whole army watching his back, it’d be okay to get singed.

 

It isn’t long before the burning world changes.

It always evolves, his subconscious seeping into his memories like spilled toxin, and his nose prickles, not with the smell of burning war, but burning innocents.

it’s always a shock, no matter how many times he watches it over and over and over, finding himself returned to the black camp, helpless as soldier after soldier and (so many fucking innocent) soldiers are taken up to the post to bleed and scream for one last time, before Noxians (barbarians, savages, _murderers_ ) toss their still breathing bodies into the pyres.

He knows it’s just a dream because he’s not tied up. He’s just numb on the ground, unable to move a single limb to help as his men scream pain and fear (and relief for the end) at hands of the Noxians (and the hands of his _stupidity)_.

He can’t escape the heat. The sharp prickle against his skin, matching with the gut turning smell of burning flesh, their screams just breaching the roar of the pyres and the laughs of their captors. And amidst it all, he’s left completely alone, helpless, useless (a symbol to be displayed, not a prisoner to be executed), the guilt ravaging his body more thoroughly than any funeral pyre as he-

He wakes up, panting, staring at the thatch and rough wooden rafters. He wasn’t in a camp. He wasn’t in danger.

People weren’t dying.

Habitually he glanced over, before frowning at the empty bed in the opposite wall of the small house - really a shack - that the villagers had been kind enough to put them up in. The simple curiosity is something to focus on, something to hold against the ever-lit guilt that would have him on his knees, sobbing and choking. It’s not hard to find Shyvana, just outside the door, face tilted out to the Wilds around them.

 

“You okay?”

He’s never met someone with senses so sharp, so he jumps when she whirls around, off guard. Her eyes are fire, deep, old and burning with something ancient and nonhuman. Yet she relaxes at the sight of him, flames flickering down from pyres to hearths as she relaxes against the outer wall of their shared home. At her slight nod, he feels his face contort, eyeing the shadows on her face and weariness in her limbs.

“Bad Dreams?”

“Yes. You?”

He feels himself sag, coming to lean at her side, as if the warmth of her hearth could chase away the coals of war, thoroughly unsurprised that she could read his own night horrors on his face.

In a break from form, her eyes are alight in a way he _knows s_ he hides, and instead of the wild, but well-meaning woman who puts his own social inadequacies to shame, he’s left remembering two bright lights in the pain, when both his lifeblood and guilt swirled around him, as he huddled in wait for his death.

“As always . . .” he murmured softly, in response, eyeing the way her mouth twists. Shyvana wore every single one of her thoughts and feelings on her face, so he easily spies the shadows in her lantern-light and feels his gut twist, wishing he could simply brush them away.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He turned this back to her and watched her internal conflict display itself, somewhere between mirth and bitterness, before both are burnt away under her blank gaze. She tilts her head up, loose purple hair spilling over her shoulders, trace smells of smoke and ash surrounding her.

“Not anymore.” Her voice is determined, fierce, as if she was prepared to set all her issues ablaze (like he was before all this) and he just presses next to her, because he loves this village and everyone in it, but the two of them are _the two of them_ and he can’t lose her (he’s already lost his right to go home, he’s lost the right to see his best friend, he’s lost _everything that made him worth saving_ ). She doesn’t offer anything else and he just waits for the dawn at her side, desperately worried that this woman will burn herself into nothing should he leave her unchecked.

So no matter how much he tries, Jarvan still dreams of burning.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I really do love these two and their lore and it's terrible that I haven't yet written something about them.
> 
> Now, Chaton, you may ask, where on Earth did this come from?
> 
> Chatonnerie doesn't answer. Chatonnerie is too busy seeing how many words pertaining to burning and dreaming that can be fit in around 2K.


End file.
